Martin Luther King, Ecological Thinker?

 

I have been musing about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his response to environmental issues. Did he care about the natural world, what Christians often refer to as Creation. Most of the photos we see of King depict him in urban settings, surrounded by throngs of people, and he's nearly always dressed in suit and tie. Did MLK have opportunities to listen to birdsong or watch the wind in the trees? Was he able to spend time outdoors with his wife and children, perhaps going for a swim in a lake or river? There doesn't appear to be much, if anything, written about this aspect of his life.

Dr. King did make the connection between the injustices experienced by Black people and their exposure to environmental risks. He was in Memphis, Tennessee, the city where he was assassinated, to march in solidarity with sanitation workers who were predominantly People of Colour. This was an issue of environmental justice. I'm grateful for an article from 2014 by Drew Dellinger called Martin Luther King Jr.-- Ecological Thinker. Here are some paragraphs from the article which intrigue me:: 

A few scholars have noted the ecological quality of King’s thought. In a 2006 speech, Larry Rasmussen, author of the recent book Earth-Honoring Faith, called King “one of the great ‘ecological’ thinkers of the 20th century,” while noting our failure to remember him as such. Other scholars such as Dianne Glave and Robert Bullard highlight King’s involvement with the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike as “inherently environmental” and a precursor of 21st century environmental justice activism. Apart from these brief mentions, the ecological nature of his thought has remained largely unexplored.

One of the best examples of King’s ecological view, and the links he draws between connectedness, justice, and nonviolence, is his “Christmas Eve Sermon on Peace,” delivered in the last months of his life from his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. “If we are to have peace on earth,” he told the congregation, “we must develop a world perspective. . . . Yes, as nations and individuals, we are interdependent.” Then, with a sentence that could easily have been uttered by John Muir or Rachel Carson, King states, “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.”

 “The cities are gasping in polluted air and enduring contaminated water,” King warned in 1967, in a statement that foreshadowed the environmental justice movement of the following decades.

King’s sacred view of nature, based in African American tradition, aligns with African and other indigenous traditions, mystical traditions, and much of the eco-spiritual thinking that would later develop. “Although God is beyond nature he is also immanent in it,” King wrote. “Probably many of us who have been so urbanized and modernized need at times to get back to the simple rural life and commune with nature… We fail to find God because we are too conditioned to seeing man-made skyscrapers, electric lights, aeroplanes, and subways.”

As Dellinger notes, this was before the environmental movement gained momentum, before the advent of  Earth Day, before Joni Mitchell sang "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot."  Would Dr. King have become an eco-faith leader if his life hadn't been cut short? 

I may just be missing what has been written, but I really wish I knew more.